Reuters' reported a Canadian theater owner said, "I thought it was a great movie" and that he believed the film would have the same broad appeal as Pixar's biggest hit Finding Nemo. Another executive described "the film's race-car-themed story line and folksy soundtrack, featuring songs by Sheryl Crow and Brad Paisley, as the perfect antidote to (gay cowboy movie) Brokeback Mountain for more conservative red-state audiences." Film Daily wrote, "Pixar's Cars surprises industry audience at ShoWest. Animated effort is company's most sentimental, old-fashioned work to date, agree delegates." At Jim Hill Media on the Internet, their reviewer wrote, "This is such a multi-layered film that ultimately I can only make one recommendation on the film: If you can only see one film this summer, go see Cars. If you can see two films, go see Cars twice... As one exhibitor sitting next to me said: 'Not only might this be the biggest film of the summer, but this is the best CARtoon ever.' I have to agree." At World of KJ.COM the writer summed up his feelings, "The best way to describe Cars would be to call it a wonderful film. It's heart warming and terribly innocent, which I believe is the real seller. All those annoying characters from the trailer, including the hillbilly actually provide memorable moments throughout the film and the voice acting is top notch. Without going into much detail, the 2 most noticeable traits about the film are the depth into which the characters are explored and how wonderfully the entire story is played out. There are only a couple of cheesy moments that I found in the film but outside of that, the film is definitely Pixar's best."

A DIFFERENT VIEW OF CARS

A friend from the East Coast who attended ShoWest wrote me, "Cars is stunning to look at and reaches new heights on a technological level, but by the very fact that it is about cars rather than toys, cute furry creatures or pretty fish it also isn't as emotionally involving as previous Pixar films. Part of the fault is with the opening of the film. We have just seen a wonderful Chuck Jones-like teaser for Ratatouie and the sentimental and funny One Man's Band. Then on comes an incredibly loud, jarring and in some ways scary lengthy opening sequence at a car race. It is all noise, fast-hard racing metal vehicles zooming over and around us. The image of a huge racetrack stadium filled with cheering fans...all cars...is beautiful and brought smiles. But the sequence seemed to create a distance from many viewers as character development was yet to come."